Good timing. With the recent rate hike, I just canceled my Apple One sub (it renewed Nov 5).
I had subscribed to Apple Music for $10/month for years – since I bought the original HomePod – but I literally have used it for only a few hours in all that time. I always thought the idea sounded great, but the HomePod was such a flop for me and Apple took so long to fix the major bugs (and many still remain) that I never used Music or the HomePod.
(Literally 99% of my HomePod use is “Siri, shut up!” when HomePod starts talking randomly thinking I asked it something when I didn’t.) I just never listen to music. I listen to audiobooks in the car, walking the dog, yard work, and on hikes. There’s no time left for music.
When Apple TV+ came out, I got that, and I do watch some shows and like it. I mainly use it to watch Major League Soccer (which is an extra subscription price, but there is a discount if you already pay for ATV+). I’m not crazy about the ATV+ price increases, but they do make sense considering the way the library has grown.
(I actually like that ATV+ is small. I can’t find anything on Netflix and I’m decades behind on shows there. Even on ATV+ I’m still on season 2 of Ted Lasso and when I go to Netflix and discover a popular show that interested me is now ten years old with 100+ episodes, it overwhelms me and I don’t start watching it.)
Apple Arcade sounded awesome, but I never really used it. I was disappointed with a few of the games that I downloaded. They were 1GB+ downloads and I bored within 5 minutes of “play.” They were no different from the other games on iPhone I don’t play. To me the perfect game (especially on phone) is Tetris. Waiting 5 minutes for a car driving simulation just to launch and load up pretty much uses up all the spare time I have for game play!
When Apple One, which cost me about $20/month, jumped in price, I looked at what I was using and said, “No way.” All I was using is TV+ and iCloud – that’s not worth $20+/month!
I wouldn’t mind News+, but you can only get that at the premium sub. News+ should be a $3-$5 add-on, not $10. I’d never use Fitness+.
So Apple stupidly lost me as a customer. I had inertia and didn’t mind leaving the Apple One sub on before, but by drawing my attention to price (which was already high for what I used), they now made me cancel and save about $10 a month!
Now my only worry is that iCloud pricing jumps from $3 for 200GB to $10 for 1TB. There’s nothing in between, which is bizarre. I have lots of iOS devices and right now I use 180GB for backup and photo storage. No way am I paying $10 for 1TB I’ll never use. If Apple doesn’t change the storage pricing, I’d probably get rid of some older devices (or just not back them up on iCloud) so that I don’t exceed the 200GB. That strikes me as stupid on Apple’s part – each device I have should come with at least 10GB of free storage space, not just 5GB per Apple ID. By quibbling for pennies, Apple will make me hesitant to buy new hardware!
Not sure what will happen when Vision Pro comes out. Will that require iCloud storage or will it be more like a Mac where you back it up yourself?